Missouri to blast drivers with ear piercing LRAD weapon.

Look at the cutesy title given by the "news" channel: "MoDOT hopes its new equipment will get your attention". Thats right, keep the sheeple nice and calm.

Weak attempt at trying to justify the purchase of weapons originally intended for use in war zones.

If they really want people to "slow down", why not just use "Barrel Bob". He's cheap and effective.





Instead, they're going to scare the bejeesus out of people as they blast drivers causing hearing loss and vertigo as they peacefully drive down the road...

First its the armored vehicles now this.

Why all the military hardware?

reply to post by gladtobehere


Highway work zones are dangerous for those that are working them. I live in Austin and see drivers speeding through the work areas with little regard for the equipment and the folks exposed to the recklessness. I think that the equipment has everything to do with safety and nothing to do with treating us like cattle.

I can guarantee that Missourians will put that kind of equipment out of commission if it is ever used for anything sinister.

reply to post by Witness2008

Witness2008
...treating us like cattle.

I agree.

Witness2008
I can guarantee that Missourians will put that kind of equipment out of commission if it is ever used for anything sinister.

By that time, it may be a bit too late.

I don't see this being a good thing
As a driver, if all of a sudden (no matter what you are doing or how fast you are going), you get slammed with a huge noise (when you arent expecting it), you will probably lose control of your vehicle. Putting people in more danger.

If one was ever used for little to no reason, i'd run it over. PS: LRAD can be deflected with the right materials i'm pretty sure. Notes for those activists that may need LRAD shields.

So when a driver freaks out or clenches their whole body in pain and rams into a barrier or worker will the state take responsibility for the resulting damage?

reply to post by Witness2008


how can use of something on people that makes them want to fist cover their ears and try to get away be considered a safety tool.
instinct is going to be cover your ears, look around and then run, i can just see people freaking out when the sound hits first then the feeling that comes from the sound in their body.

not so bright to be pointing that at people on the highway.

Remember we use military weapons for your safety.. Dont worry about the side effects of making one sick and/or causing people do go deaf..

Its so we can be safe..

Pgh G20, yep was there.. Lrad, sucked.. Just saying.. Ask Ugie also he was there I think...

I'm passing through this morning, but before this gets too far out of hand to thinking this has relation to the crowd control LRAD weapons deployed in Pittsburgh and other places, I can share a bit from my state's highway department page. It's a different unit with very different configuration for it's limitations. The military (and rumor has it..law enforcement) version can clear your thinking by blasting a nice hole of sound in one ear and out the other. A real ring to the bell...to say the least.

The highway version is there to save lives. It's something we need and I personally support this 100% in Missouri. We've had a few men killed within miles of me here, by morons who cannot drive a vehicle safely to save their lives. I don't know WHY people tend to fixate on flashy lights to almost AIM for them at times...but it's never pretty seeing what used to be a human being...kinda looking like Gumbo in a spilled bowl..all over what used to be a traveled section of highway. Maybe, with these, a few more will never know how life MIGHT have gone differently, if they hadn't had the wake up.

The alarm and message continuously loop at safe sound levels per nationally recognized standards. The sound starts out faint and increases the closer you get to the truck. As a driver passes the truck on the highway, they will briefly (less than one second) hear the device at volumes as loud as a hair dryer with your windows up or police siren with your windows down.

A secondary benefit is cost. Crash cushions can cost up to $17,000+ each time they are hit. If the truck is significantly damaged, the cost can be $100,000+. This money can be put back into our roads and bridges.

Source

If nothing else, if we apply some common sense logic to how the Highway Department is looking at this... The very LAST thing they want is to actually cause a vehicle to lose control while their people are right in the middle of the path of destruction which would result. I.E...the whole reason the LRAD system is there...because they are there to be hit in the first place and are tired of being roadkill to texting and sleepy idiots.

Tell me, mr Wrab....can this machine be "adjusted to produce the type of sound the milspec gear can produce as well?
Just wondering....maybe we the people could get some too....after all the Highway department may not miss a few.....

reply to post by stirling


I have no idea if the cheaper highway version could be hacked to match it's more sophisticated and expensive law enforcement/military version or not. Can a Laser and LED do the same thing? They're both lights and both come in red. One is coherent and highly focused, the other is incoherent and broad.

Abused..they can both, with sufficient power, blind someone on the first mistake. Similarly..LRAD can save lives with a warning tone/message that should overcome blaring radios or brain dead drivers with their head in their smart phone or it can do serious injury in a particularly nasty way.

I guess it's all in who is buying which example of the technology being used, and what the purpose of the unit is for it's design and power capability. They are anything but equal in potential or power.

What a stupid idea.... Blasting drivers with a LRAD machine, are they serious??? hahaha wow... This can't go wrong....

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


It's still an LRAD andnis obviously capable of intense sound. It will certainly be effective so as long as it's for the greater protection of people then let them mount whatever offense against us dangerous peasants it takes.

Another example of MOdot doing what they do best. Overspending on something more dangerous than helpful.
they also have it out for my poor driveway when it snows....so I'm biased.

I can think of something that costs about the same;

How many kids are going hungry at school?

And while in school--->driver's education.

Of all the trauma I've experienced in this life, nothing ranks higher than a car crash.

This new toy is a toy gun to put it to someone, to cause trauma.

It may be a tool in the right hands under the right circumstances, it's just a toy otherwise...

stirling
Tell me, mr Wrab....can this machine be "adjusted to produce the type of sound the milspec gear can produce as well?
Just wondering....maybe we the people could get some too....after all the Highway department may not miss a few.....

edit on 16-4-2014 by stirling because: (no reason given)

Maybe we should be able to get some, mount them behind our vehicle's front grill and program them to alert deer. I see far more deer remains on the highways than I do construction zone workers.

reply to post by Witness2008


I think it's a very dangerous idea. I've known people who were exposed to them during a college party and the effects weren't good, the major startle, sudden partial hearing loss, continued ringing in ears and stomach upset.

reply to post by Pixiefyre


I'm going to give the state of Missouri the benefit of the doubt. From what I have read this technology will not be used against drivers, and has nothing to do with jarring our nerves or hurting our heads or ears. It will be a continuous signal with a message that will alert drivers to what is ahead and remind everyone to take it easy. Better than the visual obstructions of flashing billboards and big fat plastic guys, along with the occasional dead worker.

I am a Missourian, and if this technology were to be used in a way as to make the roads more dangerous, or to strike the fear of THE MAN into us, I and every other Missouri resident would have a few heads on platters.

reply to post by gladtobehere


am i the only one who sees the hypocrisy here?

people(politicians, media pundits, and the uninformed) refer to semi-auto rifles as "weapons of war", and say that people shouldn't have weapons that belong in war zones....but when the police buy ACTUAL weapons of war, intended for use in ACTUAL war zones to use on US, for something as trivial as going a few miles an hour over some arbitrary limit, THAT'S ok?

what the hell is wrong with people's brains these days?

reply to post by Witness2008

I am a Missourian, and if this technology were to be used in a way as to make the roads more dangerous, or to strike the fear of THE MAN into us, I and every other Missouri resident would have a few heads on platters.

Agreed 100%. Missouri residents wouldn't stand for it being used for harm and that response has been demonstrated for the state to be well aware of with other things. Sure..they get the people who put 30-06 rounds into traffic cameras and such..but my city also shut them down and with some sense of....urgency...I'd say. The public reaction to how it was being employed was extreme. I'm sorry so many other states are likely to tolerate something overtly dangerous. (It wasn't the tickets as much as the elevated accident numbers directly attributed to the cameras and exclusive to the intersections they operated in)

As I read the MODOT site information, this is being mounted on the rear crash absorbers for the line painting and survey trucks. It's restricted to use on 4 lane divided highways and will see daylight use only. All logical measures that tells me it's being used and deployed as a tool, not so much a toy.

After all, if this fails...the people MOST likely to die from that are the men who turned it on and are inside the slow vehicle it's mounted on.

The trucks that need this are traveling 5-15 miles an hour on an interstate with vehicles rolling 70mph as the legal speed and generally 75-85mph outside specific traffic enforcement zones. That's a minimum equivalent impact energy of 60 miles an hour into a parked vehicle.....and it's happened in our state more than they're willing to continue tolerating, IMO.

Good for them to finally do something more than pass new laws to write more tickets...that never does change driving behavior anyway.

reply to post by Daedalus


You do realize that a lot of the high tech stuff that we all find use for these days came out of some type of military research and development. Do you enjoy the freedom and vast amounts of information that is so easily accessed with your lap top? Here are a few more....
mentalfloss.com...

Peoples brains are being filled with misinformation gone wild, and a need to follow the crowd. Fear is what is wrong with a lot of brains, especially around here.

Hysterics.